he went to law school and became an advocate for tenants' rights in boston where he began to scratch poems on yellow legal pads while waiting in courthouses for cases to be called. you can't read any of his 16 books of poems, translations and essays,including, most recently, "the trouble ball," without discoverina man wh undetands life as struggle. a writer for whom the past is a living, breathing muse whispering over his shoulder, as he scribbles the names of ancestors who once pulled the oars to get us through troubled waters. so it was, four years ago, in the wake of obama's victory, that the muse guided martÍn espada here to the graveside of the great 19th-century abolitionist, the former slave, frederick douglass. and from that moment came this poem. >> litany at the tomb of frederick douglass, mount hope cemetery, rochester, new york november 7, 2008. this is the longitude and latitude of the impossible. this is the epicenter of the unthinkable. this is the crossroads of the unimaginable. the tomb of frederick douglass, three days after the election. this is a world spinning a